My fascination with China started way back in 2009 when I read Peter Hessler's book River Town; from there I delved into all sorts of China related non-fiction from Factory Girls by Leslie T. Chang to Liao Yiwu's The Corpse Walker and getting myself (and, more challengingly, Nick) to China became kind of an obsession. I couldn't wait to see everywhere I'd read about with my own eyes so as soon as we needed to choose somewhere to spend a month before heading to Australia I started to campaign pretty hard for China. As you can see I won! A month seemed about right for what I knew would be a challenging country and whilst we could have hit up a few more spots our itinerary was pretty perfect for us. Over time I've learnt that I like to travel slowly - I like to have the mental energy to digest my experiences as well as making sure that I have time for the odd chilled day.
Beijing was our first stop and I'm so glad that we decided to start there. Familiarising yourself with a new country in a city with good train and bus links is a smart plan and we were also able to give our
China Mobile Hong Kong sim card a whirl to test that it worked before we ended up staying in places without wifi. I can't recommend that sim card enough, we got the data only package which works out at about £2 a day but being able to use Happy Cow on the go, whip out Google translate whenever we needed it, and to use Apple Maps and their surprisingly excellent transit info made everything so much easier than it would have been otherwise. If you're travelling to China via Hong Kong you can pick up one of these sim cards at the airport but if not you'll have to order it online. You wont be able to buy it in China!
Beijing has some iconic landmarks and Tiananmen Square was one of our very first stops.
We headed there on our first evening to watch the flag lowering ceremony and then we were there again the next day to check out the area in daylight. One thing that I hadn't realised about the square (and about China in general) is the high level of security you have to go through to get in there. Whenever you go onto the subway or into a train station anywhere in China you need to scan your bags through an airport style scanner and entering Tiananmen Square is no different. Local people need to show ID cards and everyone needs to get their bags scanned. I also received a bit of a pat down by security. Obviously this level of security means that there are lines and it would seem that certain entrances to the square will be closed, when we went there were only two open entrances so lines were long and you just kinda need to go with the flow but expect there to be a queue.
